Amy Bloom Quotes

The action stuff is only good if you get the character stuff in there as well. Sometimes that get lost in amongst all the trying to make stuff blow up.

When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.

The interesting thing about fiction from a writer's standpoint is that the characters come to life within you. And yet who are they and where are they? They seem to have as much or more vitality and complexity as the people around you.

I just want to tell a good story, so I always ask myself, 'Are these people real to me?'

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

Certainly, I read a lot and follow the news. But as a writer, I am not interested in a political story. I am searching for the humanity of the characters. I never set out to write a book about an 'issue.'

The characters are always the focal point of a book for me, whether I'm writing or reading. I may enjoy a book that has an intriguing mystery or a good plot, but to become one of my real favorites, it has to have great characters.

To me, my characters are more real than most people I meet.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

Most good fiction also has a character the writer seems to know more deeply than anyone can actually be known in life, but a few unusual writers can make something great without that.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

I'm focused on finding characters I connect to.

We have a writing process that's very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.

You have to find something there that relates to the characters and reality on some level.

I'm more interested in character than events. I've observed that about myself as a writer. I find events, even the most dramatic sort, not to be such fertile ground.

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it.

Never argue with your characters; they know themselves better than you do.

I never try to give a message in my books. It's about living with characters long enough to hear their voices and let them tell me the story. Sometimes I would love to have a happy ending, and it doesn't happen because the character or the story leads me in another direction.

I seem to have to make my characters family before I can access their hearts in any way that matters.